Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes five days weekly with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

Search This Blog

15.1.15

Social
Justice U. strikes again with a pushing of a political ideology that
carries the university further away from the spiritual to a secular agenda, one
that Louisiana dioceses seem willing recklessly to follow that only can reduce
its influence in public policy on things that matter.

Researchers at Loyola University in New Orleans, a nominally
Catholic college under the auspices of the religious order Society of Jesus,
has for years proclaimed itself “Social Justice U.” and is replete with trendy
features to back its boast, such as its community participating in various
marches and vigils to protest the outrage of the day, and with various centers
with the phrase in their names or in their mission statements. One such unit,
the Social Research Institute, decided to create a report arguing that not only
should society see that all people live decently, but that they live quite “a
modest, dignified life.”

According to its definition of this
level, that equates, at a bare minimum for a couple with one child, to around $55,000
to ensure “economic security,” claiming this constituted a “no frills”
existence. Contrast this with the federal poverty limit – the amount below
which many welfare programs kick in, although some start lower and some begin
higher – of the same kind of family, which is presently about $20,000. For this
$35,000 annual difference, the authors recommend, it is the responsibility of
people through their government to compensate.

14.1.15

Louisiana’s education policy-makers
need to resist any changes at the federal level that may prompt foes of reforms
in this area over the past few years to claim these as justifications for
retreating down the long path of educational excellence, and embrace state-based
school accountability alterations that will complement these reforms.

This week, the Board of Elementary
and Secondary Education’s committee dealing with school and district
accountability heard
a report it commissioned on potential improvements to its rating system for
schools. Currently,
while it varies among levels of schools, all scales used take as its major input,
at least half of the appropriate rating, achievement of students on tests and
then a letter grade gets assigned as a result to the school.

The study recommended that the
grade be computed at least half on aggregate student academic growth rather
than level of achievement, mimicking that component for assessment of many
teachers in schools, in that level of achievement has too many exogenous
factors such as socioeconomic background of students affecting it. Also
suggested was to create more gradations in the letter grades, such as awarding
plusses and minuses, because otherwise movement from one category to another
took such an amount of change that this could encourage staffs from satisficing
with a particular non-poor grade and discourage them from trying to move out of
it if much effort would not be rewarded with an incrementally higher grading.

13.1.15

That the more Louisiana’s system of
evaluating the majority of its employees has changed when it really remained the
same illustrates the unfinished business remaining to creating a more efficient
state civil service.

Last
week, the Department of State Civil Service issued statistics regarding the
past fiscal year’s evaluations of the roughly 39,000 employees that fall under
this rating system for civil servants. While around 3 percent could not be
rated mostly for reason of insufficient length of time of employment, about 96
percent ended up qualifying for a raise, although about a tenth of them will
not have one as their agencies’ budgets lack funds to deliver it. This
concluded the first full implementation of changes
made in 2011 that at the time sparked controversy.

Needlessly, as it turned out. After
pulling back on a more far-reaching overhaul, Gov. Bobby
Jindal accepted a much more tepid set of adjustments that only marginally created
incentives for a more efficient workforce through compensation policy. The data
from last year verified that, from a system which had raised almost every
employee’s wages annually and almost always with uniformity, the state now has
a system that awards about as many of these proportionally with a slightly
greater range of variation. Administration officials asserted still this
represented improvement because with a different worldview installed that
spells out expectations of employees that this approach would raise the
standard of performance.

It’s not so much that revenues from
the state’s excise tax on extracted oil comprise a large part of the state’s
budget – the 12.5 percent levy’s proceeds making up about a fifth of budgeted
revenues – but that a shortfall can be spread only around a limited portion of
the entire budget. When last year voters unwisely locked in reimbursement rates
for nursing homes and hospitals and cordoned off tens of millions of dollars to
build artificial reefs until the end of time and still never could spend it all,
that put over 80 percent of the budget off limits to reductions in the normal
budgeting process for next fiscal year (most of this money could be touched if
a budget adjustment during a fiscal year would occur with supermajority
legislative approval). This means for FY 2016 one area is set up most for
reductions, higher education, and another somewhat so, what has been left
unprotected in health care.

11.1.15

Recently, in the context of Rep. Steve Scalise inadvertently
speaking about taxes over a dozen years ago unbeknownst to him to a handful of
white supremacists, this
space noted that the political left needs to embellish the episode in order
to fit it into its narrative, despite having to buy into some incredible
assumptions in order to accomplish that. The thinking of its members that
enables them to overcome this high degree of credulity merits discussion.

Given the insignificance of the
event, its datedness, and paucity of recorded evidence concerning it, two
stories have emerged about it. The much more plausible of them (an excellent
recounting of the nuances of both is here)
is that the same guy, Kenny Knight, who headed the group also headed a
neighborhood organization and scheduled the former to meet after the latter in
the same location. Republican Scalise in 2002 was invited to speak to the
organization and did so on tax issues, knowing nothing of the existence of the
other group nor that it had some of its members wander in early to listen to
him. Both Knight, who never was a political ally of Scalise, and his then-paramour
confirm this account of events, both of whom could gain lasting political
relevance and immortality if they argued Scalise knowingly and willingly spoke
to the group; they gain nothing to say otherwise. What little documentation
exists of the group’s meeting makes no mention of an appearance scheduled for
Scalise.

The implausible version contends
they, for unknown reasons, are covering up for Scalise or sanitizing his appearance,
with this resting on that after the group’s meeting the existence of a couple
of Internet forum posts mentioned his speaking and that a political opponent of
Scalise’s, Kenny Lassalle, said he ran another organization in that same
neighborhood, that Knight was antagonistic to it, and that Knight’s group didn’t
exist, backed by that it was not registered with the Secretary of State as a
nonprofit corporation. The holes in this should be obvious: dissatisfied with
Lassalle’s organization, Knight could have formed a rump organization to
counter and which like many such organizations he did not formally incorporate
it, and the consideration of cui bono
shows that Lassalle has everything to gain by trying to damage Scalise
politically.

About Me

Subscribe To

Comment publishing requirements

You must be a registered user with an OpenID-compliant service to leave comments, which will be moderated. Any comments that do not address issues in the post for which they are intended will not be posted; neither will those that utterly lack intellectual coherence.